“No man who hates dogs and children,” W.C. Fields liked to say, “can be all bad.” The biggest difference between Mr. Fields and the American Civil Liberties Union is that the ACLU still likes dogs.

In case after case, in courtrooms all over the country, the ACLU continues to affirm its abiding hatred for the American family – for traditional moral values, for the sanctity of marriage and for life itself.

But perhaps, most alarmingly, for innocent children – especially children raised with a strong faith.

It is not just that the organization has taken leave of its moral conscience. The ACLU has grown so extreme, so systematic, so concentrated in its war on children that it is easier to believe its attorneys have taken leave of their senses.

How else to explain their determined defense of pornographic and outrageous websites, like that of the North American Man-Boy Love Association, which serenades aspiring pederasts in the subtleties of sodomy?

Convicted killer Charles Jaynes wrote in his diary that he drew “psychological comfort” from the NAMBLA website, studying it carefully before kidnapping and murdering 10-year-old Jeffrey Curley of Cambridge, Mass. The website, Jaynes said, helped him and his partner, Salvatore Sicari, overcome some of their lingering hesitations about committing such a crime.

Yet when Jeffrey’s parents sued NAMBLA for promoting materials that fanned the flames of rape and murder in Jaynes’ and Sicari’s twisted minds, the ACLU proudly leapt to the organization’s defense, citing First Amendment protections.

Yet, the ACLU states in one of their position papers that “freedom of speech does not prevent punishing conduct that intimidates, harasses or threatens another person, even if words are used.” How can speech that promotes the sodomizing of young boys not be interpreted as intimidation, harassment or threatening?

According to ACLU Massachusetts Legal Director John Reinstein, the Constitution sides with the publication of any material, however heinous, unless said material is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action.” Apparently, for the ACLU, “lawless action” doesn’t cover the sodomy and murder of a little boy.

What does the ACLU believe pornography is for? Stirring less perversion in the minds of those who absorb it? Cultivating purer, more selfless and giving love in human relationships?

That’s the incredible logic they are asking court after court to accept – that pornographic, pederastic sites are harmless publications produced by guileless individuals to bring innocent sexual pleasure to predatory deviants and the children they seduce.

That’s not just illogical, it’s a denial of human nature.

It brings to mind the old fallacy about people who throw meat to hungry tigers, hoping the tigers will become vegetarians. Sane people know that’s not how it works. In the real world, the tigers just get hungrier for flesh … and prey on our children.

The ACLU, though, professes to see innocence everywhere – except, of course, in the Boy Scouts of America. There, they insist, religious zealots are tutoring the bigots of tomorrow … by teaching them to build campfires and character.

But then, it’s not surprising that a group that embraces NAMBLA would be tied up in knots by the Boy Scouts, an organization grounded in a traditional morality, promoting faith, family, and self-reliance. Such old-fashioned American “bigotry” seems infinitely more repulsive to the ACLU that the depravities of child sexual abuse.

This is why ACLU attorneys and their allies are working furiously to force the Boy Scouts to accept scoutmasters who engage in homosexual behavior, despite studies showing that those who engage in such behavior are more likely to become pedophiles than those who don’t.

Behind the blitzkrieg against the Boy Scouts is an essential conflict of interest: The ACLU is paving the legal way for an atheistic, libertine society, which puts them at cross-purposes with the God-fearing, self-disciplined kids who help old ladies across the street.

So the ACLU is bent on banishing the beliefs of the Boy Scouts, of traditional families, and of traditional churches by labeling them “hate,” an insidious danger that poisons the impressionable minds of young, naive Americans.

Yet they assure us that the ideas promoted by atheists, by advocates of homosexual behavior, and by the disturbed deviants of NAMBLA are harmless, incapable of seducing or destroying innocent lives – or at least that it doesn’t matter to them when such seductions and destructions occur.

Both convictions cannot be true. If the beliefs of any group, however powerfully expressed, exert no tangible influence on the minds and behavior of others, then the idea of “hate speech” makes no sense. But if ideas can inspire lawless behavior, NAMBLA is a threat. That’s a paradox the ACLU can’t afford to face. And our children are suffering the consequences.